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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28828944">free to run home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mauxre/pseuds/mauxre'>mauxre</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, F/M, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, Impostor Syndrome, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Reader-Insert, Self-Doubt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:48:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,861</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28828944</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mauxre/pseuds/mauxre</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“don’t matter how far i’ve gone, i’m always free to run home.”</p><p>— In which Iwaizumi Hajime finally learns that home will always be waiting for him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Iwaizumi Hajime/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>free to run home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>listen to: <strong>don't forget where you belong</strong> by one direction</p><p>i wrote this a few months before and posted it way back on my old acc. i made some minor changes so here's a repost! sorry if the formatting is a bit wonky :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Iwaizumi wasn’t one to make rash decisions.</p><p> </p><p>Everything he did was well thought of and carefully planned. That wasn’t to say that he overthought the littlest things. He just liked to be prepared, <em>ready</em>, to make sure he wouldn’t regret a single thing.</p><p> </p><p> California was no different.</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he made the decision to make the big cross-continent move to America, but he’d like to think it was always in the back of his mind. Apart from wanting to train under Utsui Takashi since his early volleyball days, he’d always subconsciously wanted to live somewhere else. Not necessarily permanently, but he was still young, still naive — he wanted to <em>explore</em>. And when the opportunity to study overseas presented itself to him, who was he to say no?</p><p> </p><p> That was his plan. That was the stepping stone to his dream of becoming an athletic trainer. That was a golden opportunity most people would kill for. So why was he lying flat on his bed right now, staring up at the ceiling of his cramped apartment-slash-dorm, suddenly feeling homesick?</p><p> </p><p> It wasn’t that California was being particularly bad to him… He had a handful of friends, he was learning a new language, and he had already explored most of what Irvine had to offer after more than a year of living there. So why did he feel sick to his bones?</p><p> </p><p> Iwaizumi sighed, rolling over on his side to face his nightstand. He stared at the bright flash of his phone screen and felt even more nauseous. You’ve been trying to reach him for a while now but he just couldn’t bring himself to answer.</p><p> </p><p> <em>“How’s my favorite athletic-trainer-in-the-making?” </em>He could already envision you saying that with a cheeky grin.</p><p> </p><p> But that was just it. How was he going to tell you that he failed his written midterm last week? How was he going to tell you that he absolutely blew his graded recitation the other day? How was he going to tell you that he felt like a complete and utter failure?</p><p> </p><p> All of you back in Miyagi probably thought he was some hotshot international student now, but really, he just wanted to go home.</p><p> </p><p> His mind drifted back to how he FaceTimed with Oikawa, Makki, and Mattsun the other night, and the latter two wouldn’t stop teasing about how the entire prefecture already thought of him and Oikawa as the two big-time best friends who made it across the globe.</p><p> </p><p> For Oikawa, sure, that was probably true but as for him — for Iwaizumi — he thought they got it all wrong.</p><p> </p><p> <b><em>Been a lot of places, I’ve been all around the world</em></b></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Seen a lot of faces, never knowing where I was</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>On the horizon, well I know the sun will be rising</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Back home</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p> It was probably around noon back home. And he knew that <em>you</em> definitely knew that it was still early evening in Irvine.</p><p> </p><p> It was around eight o’clock and he was already washed up, well fed, and done with his readings. He had no reason <em>not</em> to answer your call. But something — or <em>many</em> things, actually — kept holding him back.</p><p> </p><p> Sometimes, in rare bouts of insecurity, Iwaizumi thought <em>you</em> would have fared better had you been the one given an opportunity to study abroad. But he tried not to think about that often. After all, he was well aware that the chance he was given was one in a million and he wouldn’t dare want to sound ungrateful.</p><p> </p><p> This chance had given him more opportunities than he could’ve expected. He had been to a lot of places, he had met a bunch of new and old faces in his travels, and he had definitely learned a lot in his time so far at university. But still, the feeling of Impostor Syndrome kept creeping up on him, slowly but surely, until he started doubting why he was even in California in the first place.</p><p> </p><p> <em>“Stop thinking like that, Hajime. You deserve this, you worked hard for this,” </em>you had said to him over the phone during the first time he confided in you his worries. And your words worked for a while. He was able to diminish any lingering self-doubts he had for probably about three months or so, before that nagging feeling crept up on him again.</p><p> </p><p> <b><em>Living out of cases, packing up and taking off</em></b></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Made a lot of changes, but not forgetting who I was</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>On the horizon, well I know the moon will be rising</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Back home</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p> Truthfully, he had changed. He knew that much.</p><p> </p><p> He stopped answering his parents’ calls, his friends’ calls, and even though he could never bring himself to ignore <em>your</em> calls, he only picked up once every two weeks. He stopped coming home for the holidays, too, claiming that even seasonal plane tickets were becoming more and more expensive.</p><p> </p><p> He didn’t mean to change. He just wanted to avoid showing all of you just how much of a failure he was. And in the back of his mind, he didn’t want to ruin your perceptions of him as this successful university student. He didn’t want to let all of you down.</p><p> </p><p> But by doing so, he had never felt more alone.</p><p> </p><p> <em>“We miss you, Hajime,” </em>his mom had said one morning when his loneliness finally got the best of him and he finally answered some calls from home.</p><p> </p><p> <em>He missed you all, too…</em></p><p> </p><p> Living alone in a foreign country was already too much to deal with. But as he had stared at the dawning sun that early morning and listened to his mom drone on about one of his younger cousins taking an interest in volleyball because they wanted to be like their <em>Hajime-niisan</em>, he started to feel better.</p><p> </p><p> There was something melancholic about seeing the sunrise on his side of the world, and knowing that the moon was rising on the other side back home. And that stark contrast reminded him of something you told him not so long ago…</p><p> </p><p> <em>(“Isn’t it amazing,” you had mused to him while he was perched on his desk doing his homework, “how the world keeps turning?”</em></p><p> </p><p> <em>“Mhm,” he had mumbled absentmindedly. “Where are you going with this?”</em></p><p> </p><p> <em>“Don’t you see?” You had sounded so excited, Iwaizumi couldn’t help but take his eyes off his homework and look at your face through the screen of his phone. “The universe is so big. Hell, you’re practically halfway across the world right now but still… the world keeps turning. And Haji, we’re all turning — we’re all moving — the same way…”)</em></p><p> </p><p> You were right, as usual. But sometimes, he forgot just how vast, just how <em>huge</em> the universe was. Sometimes, he forgot just how small he actually was, how small all of you were.</p><p> </p><p> All of you were just tiny insignificant passersby in the infinite possibilities offered by the universe. And at the end of the day, whether he succeeded in becoming a trainer or he had to go back home to Miyagi empty handed, nothing was going to change — he would still be small, and the world would still be turning.</p><p> </p><p> That thought made him feel incredibly warm.</p><p> </p><p> (Maybe he wasn’t so alone, after all?)</p><p> </p><p> <b><em>I’ve been away for ages, but I got everything I need</em></b></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>I’m flicking through the pages I’ve written in my memory</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>I feel like I’m dreaming, so I know that I’m never leaving</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>No, I won’t go</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p> “You sound different…”</p><p> </p><p> “Do I?” Iwaizumi asked, clearing his throat a couple of times and checking the signal on his phone to make sure you were hearing him properly. “I ate some of those spicy ramen cups you sent me. I probably sound a bit raspy but I think—”</p><p> </p><p> “No, no, it’s not that,” you assured him, not wanting him to feel self-conscious, not when he <em>finally</em> answered your call. “I meant that you sound… lighter, if that makes sense?”</p><p> </p><p> He chuckled, “You, on the other hand, sound like Oikawa. He just told me that when he called yesterday…” he trailed off when he saw that you were smiling softly at him. “What?”</p><p> </p><p> “Nothing,” you shook your head, still smiling. “It’s just nice to hear you laugh again, Hajime…”</p><p> </p><p> His stomach churned. He knew you hadn’t meant to make him feel guilty, that you were just stating facts, but still, he felt a wave of guilt wash over him at your words. “I’m so sor—”</p><p> </p><p> “Please don’t apologize.”</p><p> </p><p> “But I… I just shut you all out. I pushed you all away.”</p><p> </p><p> “I know, baby. But listen to me,” you locked eyes with him and even though a digital screen was in between the two of you, your eyes still held the same intensity as it did when you were face-to-face with each other. “We may not understand what exactly is going on with you over there… but you have to know that whatever it is your feeling — however big or small it may seem — is entirely valid.”</p><p> </p><p> Iwaizumi broke eye contact first, bowing his head in shame. He couldn’t help but think that it was still uncharacteristic of him to have isolated himself from all of you. He practically left Miyagi as a confident and self-assured eighteen-year-old but was now living in Irvine all lost and confused.</p><p> </p><p> And now that he knew better, he had come to realize that whatever was eating him up, was something only <em>he </em>could make disappear.</p><p> </p><p> <b><em>Lights off when they should be on</em></b></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Even stars in the skies, they’re wrong</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Short days, when the nights are long</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>When I think of the things I’ve done</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p> “I’m so sorry for missing our anniversary. I lost track of time and was too ashamed to even call you the next day to make up for it.”</p><p> </p><p> “I forgive you, Haji.”</p><p> </p><p> “I’m sorry for blowing up on you that one time when you called in between classes. We had an exam that day and I hadn’t studied the night before.”</p><p> </p><p> “I understand, baby.”</p><p> </p><p> “I’m sorry that I missed mom and dad’s anniversary. I wanted to send them a gift but I got fired from my part time job that week. I couldn’t… I couldn’t buy them anything.”</p><p> </p><p> “I’ll be sure to tell them. Don’t worry.”</p><p> </p><p> “I’m sorry for blowing you off when we planned to stream the last <em>Godzilla</em> movie together. I, uh, fell asleep that time. I don’t know, I didn’t even do anything that day but I felt absolutely exhausted.”</p><p> </p><p> “You don’t have to explain yourself, Hajime. If you were tired, then it’s good that you got some rest.”</p><p> </p><p> “I’m sorry for ignoring your calls during my last birthday. I just… felt so alone. And I wanted to <em>be </em>alone. I don’t know, I don’t even understand it but that’s how I felt.”</p><p> </p><p> “It’s all good,” you assured him, that last apology was already the fifteenth one in a row and you had half a mind to stop him, but you knew that he wanted to do this. He <em>needed </em>to do this. So you just sat and listened to him ramble because it was the least you could do.</p><p> </p><p> “I’m sorry for being such a shitty boyfriend. I swear once I graduate, I’ll make up for all the lost time. Hell, I’ll even take you to <em>Universal Studios</em>. You’ve always wanted to go there, right?”</p><p> </p><p> You smiled — both because of his eagerness and because of his brief mention of graduating. He may not have realized it, but he just gave you hope that he still had his eyes set on his original path, that he wasn’t completely discouraged. “I love you, Haji.”</p><p> </p><p> He stilled, staring at you with his mouth slightly open in disbelief. “You— You still do?”</p><p> </p><p> “Of course,” you answered immediately. No doubts, no second guesses.</p><p> </p><p> “Even after all I’ve done? Even after I’ve been such a jerk? You… still love me?”</p><p> </p><p> “Always.”</p><p> </p><p> <b><em>Don’t matter how far I’ve gone</em></b></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>I’m always free to run home</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p> That was all it took, really. That one word was all it took.</p><p> </p><p> Hearing the soft whisper of “always” leaving your lips was what pushed him over the edge. His face scrunching up, endless tears started rolling down his cheeks. He covered his face with both his hands, leading him to lose hold of his phone, sending it toppling face down to the floor. Sobbing, Iwaizumi poured out every ounce of regret, guilt, and loneliness he had felt for the past year.</p><p> </p><p> Your screen was met with the brown varnish of his apartment’s hardwood floors, and you could hear his uncontrollable sobs in the background. Your heart shattered at how utterly <em>broken</em> he sounded, but you decided to keep quiet first, knowing he more than needed this little breakdown.</p><p> </p><p> You could hear him mutter a bunch of words like “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and “so stupid” and “didn’t mean to push you away”. If you could’ve, you definitely would’ve leapt across the screen and hugged him physically, assuring him that he was good, that he was <em>great</em>.</p><p> </p><p> But you couldn’t. So you settled for giving him the comfort he needed as much as you could through the help of technology.</p><p> </p><p> “I love you, Haji. I’m proud of you. I’m so, so, so proud of you. I love you so much. We all love you so much. You’ve accomplished so much. You’ve worked so hard…”</p><p> </p><p> “…so sorry. I won’t push you all away again. I’ll be better. I’m so, so, so sorry. Please forgive me. I was so stupid. I didn’t know what I was thinking…”</p><p> </p><p> The two of you kept babbling words like a mantra, and eventually your chants became unintelligible, but both of you didn’t care. It was only a good thirty minutes later when the two of you had quieted down, that Iwaizumi reached to pick his phone from the floor, turned it right side up, and looked at you.</p><p> </p><p> “I love you, too.”</p><p> </p><p> You gave him a breathtaking smile and he vowed then and there that he would do whatever it took to keep you smiling like that.</p><p> </p><p> “I’m so proud of you, Hajime.”</p><p> </p><p> He took a sharp intake of breath before scrunching his eyes closed, overwhelmed. “Thank you… Thank you so much for being so good to me, so patient…”</p><p> </p><p> His mind kept replaying the image of you being so understanding, so caring towards him despite all his shortcomings. Again and again, he kept replaying the scene of you telling him you were proud of him, of you telling him that you love him.</p><p> </p><p> <b><em>Don’t forget where you belong, home</em></b></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Don’t forget where you belong, home</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>If you ever feel alone, don’t</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>You were never on your own</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p> His mind drifted back to your first date when he took you to a fancy restaurant only to realize he had left his wallet home, to his first match back in high school when you watched and cheered for him from the sidelines, to the first time he introduced you to Oikawa as his partner and the two of you immediately clicked, to the time you drove him to the airport and promised him you’d wait for him while he followed his dreams across the world. His thoughts revolved around you and how you were back in Miyagi, waiting for him with a gentle smile, waiting for him to come home.</p><p> </p><p> <em>Home…</em></p><p> </p><p> And suddenly, his heart felt completely full and his mind drifted to the small velvet box he kept hidden in the drawer of his nightstand. The question was already at the tip of his tongue but he held himself back because this was <em>you</em> and you deserved better than some rushed proposal done through a video call right after he had a total breakdown.</p><p> </p><p> No. You deserved more than that.</p><p> </p><p> Which was why he was suddenly filled with brimming confidence as he said the next few words completely out of the blue.</p><p> </p><p> “Baby?”</p><p> </p><p> “Hm?”</p><p> </p><p> He smiled at you, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I think I’m gonna come home for the holidays.”</p><p> </p><p> Your jaw dropped, your eyes blinking as heat crept up your cheeks and on the tips of your ears because you couldn’t believe what you were hearing. It had been so long since he came home to visit, since you’ve last seen him personally. But you quickly masked up your shock and frantically nodded your head a bit too eagerly. “Of course, you dummy.”</p><p> </p><p> He sighed happily — both because of your eagerness and because he absolutely cannot wait to come home to you and drop down on one knee to ask you something he’d been meaning to for a while now.</p><p> </p><p> But for now, he settled for listening to you berate him for apparently not taking better care of himself. He nodded and answered at the right times but to be honest, he was only half listening, his excitement at the prospect of coming home getting the best of him.</p><p> </p><p> Because Iwaizumi wasn’t one to make rash decisions. But asking you to marry him — whether it was something he planned for months on end or even if it was something he considered rather rashly and hurriedly — was something he knew he would <em>never</em> regret.</p>
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